Hervey Bay, Queensland

We arrived at Hervey Bay around 3pm so after getting checked in went for a wander around. We soon found out that there wasn't much to do here so that night we had a few drinks with Conor as he was leaving the next morning, and had an earlyish night. The next morning we were woken up early due to our really disrespectful roomies. We don't think it's much to ask for people to be considerate of others who are sleeping when they leave!

Not much else really happened during the daytimes, we would go for a walk, sunbathe on the beach, or watch a film in the movie room (Confessions of a Shopaholic still makes us laugh lots). On one of our walks Dani got poo'd on by a bird (twice this has happened now, yet we still haven't won the lottery) and whilst walking under a shop, a parrot fell out of a window right in front of us! We were a bit alarmed by this but we got the man from a shop who said he'd look after it which made us feel a bit better. We also found that most people in Hervey Bay were really friendly, especially a group of people from the local church who would give out free hotdogs and 'soda' to backpackers every Thursday, we liked them!

The second evening we met our new roomies who were three Americans, a couple and a friend. We said we were going out for a few drinks and the friend of the couple came along as he was fed up of being the third wheel, especially as they always went to be early. As it was Friday night, the pub opposite our hostel was fairly busy and had a live band on so we sat there chatting to our new friend Greg. Back at the hostel we met some people who were out celebrating one of the girls' birthdays. However, we were disappointed to hear that she hadn't received the birthday bumps! So the poor girl lay on the floor as we bumped her 26 times, she was a bit shy but we think she secretly enjoyed it =)

The following day after spending the day on the beach, we bumped into Jamie, Callum and Nick then an hour or so later bumped into Dan and Kev in the hostel, it was like a mini reunion! So that night, along with the people they'd met on their Frazer Island trip, we all went and had drinks in the park near the beach on some picnic benches. This is where we met Joanne, well we think that's her name, she told other people her name was Pearl. Either way, this crazy Abo lady sat with us for awhile before becoming abusive because no one would give her alcohol. On top of her being a drunken mess already, she didn't look the cleanest or healthiest so it's not surprising we chose to keep our drinks for ourselves! This is also the night Nick got banned from Queensland. As we were all sat drinking a police car pulled up, causing us all to panic as we were drinking in a public place, but they walked straight past us and over to Nick, who unbeknown to us was urinating on a tree in the park. After a very long talk the police left and Nick came over saying that the police hadn't given him a fine, but told him just not to return to Queensland, random!

We had a really good night, catching up wit the lads and meeting the people from their trips. Unfortunately, the morning after the night before wasn't so good. This is where we had our funniest (and stupid) departure. We were awoken to an announcement over the speakers saying that check out is at 10am and the bus departing for the greyhound station was leaving. It was 9.55am, we were in bed, not fully packed and supposed to be on that bus! After a frantic 5 minutes of running around throwing our belongings in what ever bags we could find, we managed to get on the bus just in time. The other people didn't look impressed but we were still a little bit drunk so didn't care! At the greyhound station we said bye to Kev and Dan before getting on our bus to Rainbow Beach. Whoever says we don't look like real travelers, eat your words, the pictures prove that we are =)